


Solace Themselves

by Rubynye



Category: The Martian - Andy Weir
Genre: A lot more sex talk than I was expecting, Canon Compliant, Compersion, F/M, Multi, Polyamory, Violent Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-14 17:52:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16917528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: "And then I thought," Beth says softly, voice wobbling, "at least I could talk to Mark."





	Solace Themselves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [often_adamanta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/often_adamanta/gifts).



> Dear Often_Adamanta, you asked for exactly the story I hoped to get to write, and I really hope you enjoy this tale you've inspired. 
> 
> Anyone who knows my title scheme will know who I am: as ever, the title is from Robert Browning's "My Star"

_Rap-tap-tap-tap_ on his door wakes Mark from his easy doze. For a moment he flails through time — is he home? At school? In training? Hallucinating on Mars? — before he lands in the right moment: his bunk on the _Hermes_ , forty-three days out from Mars, rescued and recovering and on his way home. And now, with someone knocking on his door.

“Gimme’ya’m’mnt,” Mark mumbles as he heaves himself up — who turned the gravity to 150%? — and lurches forwards. Nothing’s flashing, no alarms, so he figures the likelihood of looming disaster is somewhat low, but that just leaves _interpersonal issues_ at fuck-o-clock. But while he’s working on thinking he makes it to the door, so he might as well open it.

Beth’s there. Beth’s standing there and her eyes are bloodshot, eyelids purpled and swollen, little wisps of hair stick to her raw cheeks. “Johanssen?” She looks like she’s been crying. She throws herself on him, arms wrapped tight around his ribs as she snuffles into his chest.

She might still be crying. Mark backs into his room, Beth wrapped around him, and shuts his door. “Hmaahk,” she mumbles, probably his name muffled through cloth and skin, and shifts her hold down a little; as he blinks awake he carefully settles his arms around her shaking shoulders and tries to stop himself from trying to figure out what’s going on. Tears need a very different kind of math.

“Mark,” Beth manages a bit more comprehensibly, pulling one hand back to rub her face as she snuffles. “Ugh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to just…”

She hasn’t looked up yet, which indicates that whatever it is must be pretty bad, and he’s really trying not to worry about if she and Chris had a fight, but which also gives him a few more moments to smile goofily down at the gleam on her dark hair as he says with that old Watney cheer, “Hey, it’s okay, we all multitask, right? I’m a botanist, an engineer, a snotrag, whatever you need.”

Beth laughs, even if it’s a bit smushed and soggy, and finally looks up, reddened eyes and a little sideways smile. “I should probably explain why I started crying on you.”

“Sure,” Mark agrees, and presses his smile shut over a yawn, then adds, “C’mere.” Beth smiles a little wider, and he backs up rather than turning around, because sometimes a guy has to show off, and manages not to fall ass over teakettle onto his own bed, settling Beth beside him into the crook of his arm. “What’s up, Johannsen? I need to challenge Beck to fisticuffs at dawn?”

That actually gets her to laugh a tiny bit, shaking her head, leaning in against his shoulder. “No, Chris is fine, he’s wonderful.”

“He’s definitely fine,” Mark says, to get that particular boyfriend-sharing little grin from her, but there’s still a painful crease between her eyes.

“I — okay, Beth, spit it out.” She takes a deep breath and says like a report, “I had a nightmare.” Mark nods, because it must have been a doozy and even he knows when to shut it, and she keeps her momentum. “I dreamt we were having sex,” and she looks _way_ too sad about such a happy topic, but Mark keeps quiet and doesn’t interrupt. “I was — I had his dick in my mouth. You know how much he likes that.” Mark hums, because he sure does and because Chris tastes good, and wins another little conspiratorial grin from Beth. “And I started kissing up his tummy, I was going to climb onto him, but then I —“

She chokes, and hides her face against Mark’s chest, and he keeps from asking with considerable effort, because so far this sounds like a happy dream entirely at odds with her dismay. “I bit him,” Beth says, low, half-muffled into his shirt, "not -- not in the fun way," and Mark’s glad she can’t see his face as he hisses between his teeth. 

“Fucking subconscious,” he adds sympathetically, hugs her with both arms, and wishes a tiny bit for enough alcohol to wash that image out of his head.

“Yeah,” Beth mutters. “And, shit, Mark, it gets worse. I’m sorry. I—“

“Let it out,” he tells her, as her shoulders shake under his hand. “Or it’s just gonna keep bouncing around inside your head, right?” Go him, remembering the psych module.

“Right.” Beth rubs her face and wraps her arm back around Mark’s belly, making him suddenly aware of it and its bitability. “I mean, I bit off a chunk of him, like a mouthful of burger, Mark, I don’t think I can ever eat one again—“ he winces, but at least the horrible nightmare is tumbling out of her in an unbroken stream of words — “and he was bleeding, pouring out, flooding the bed, running down onto the floor, and I looked up at him and he was all bedroom-eyed still and he _smiled _at me. He smiled. And then I finally woke up, thank the fucking Lord, and his arms were wrapped around me, and my heart was pounding, and I couldn’t, I couldn’t…”__

__Beth shudders into another sob, and Mark has no Martian idea what to say. He just hugs her tight and kisses the top of her head. But she doesn’t resume full-on crying, just snuffles and hangs onto him, and eventually he comes up with, “Wow, um, do we need to up your iron supplement?”_ _

__Beth laughs, for real, shaking differently in Mark’s arms, and shifts, pushing her knee up beneath her. He’s felt this move before, he likes this move, he eases his hold enough to let her pull herself up and kiss him. It’s closed-mouth and warm and a little salty, but it’s a kiss from Beth, those are always better than good. “Thanks,” she says, looking into his eyes as she slides down to lean on him again. “The thing is, I know why — I’ve had this dream before. I know why I have it.”_ _

__“Huh,” Mark says intelligently, and Beth smiles._ _

__And then she frowns again. “Promise you won’t feel guilty?”_ _

__“Guilty?” He echoes while he waits for his stomach to finish clenching into a ball of terrified anticipation. “Hey, I’m so awesome the five hottest astronauts ever gave up another year and a half of their lives just to pick me up. What have I got to feel guilty about?” Besides that, and the billions-plus MAV, and everything else it took to get his sorry ass off Mars, all the reasons he sometimes wonders if he should’ve just taken a fistful of pills on his second day stranded and gone to sleep for good._ _

__But if he had Beth wouldn’t be leaning on him now, trusting him with something so deep she can’t even go to Beck with it, and at least this wasn’t his dream, he still has the delicious option of blowing Chris next time they have him over. Maybe he can help Beth ease back into it, if only so he gets to watch how pretty she looks with her mouth full, if only so she’ll feel good again._ _

__So he nods, and she starts talking again. “Did anyone tell your our contingency plan if we missed the resupply?” He shakes his head, and she smiles a bit wider and looks down again. “Long story short, if we hadn’t made it, if we didn’t get resupplied — Captain Lewis and everyone else but me would have killed themselves in the cooler. I would’ve stayed with the _Hermes_ around the Mars loop and back to Earth.”_ _

__“Well fuck, that’s grim,” Mark blurts, but on second thought he endorses his first. “But the cooler? — oh, _shit_.” Because there wouldn’t be enough food to last even one person that whole trip, unless she ate their bodies too. “God.” What do you even say to that? “There’s — there’s a rump roast joke in here somewhere?”_ _

__That is not the thing to say, except instead of bursting into tears or jumping away from him Beth just huffs, so maybe she’s learned enough Watneyese to understand, and mutters, “You sound like Martinez.”_ _

__Mark thinks a grin. Of course Rick would. “Someone had to bring the snark in my absence.”_ _

__“No, not really,” Beth says, but lightly. But then she takes a breath, another, and Mark knows she’s not done. “Captain Lewis ordered me to stay alive,” she tells him, her voice much lower. “You know how she is… when she told me the plan I cried. Full on snot-tastic tears, worse than this. I said no way would I do it. I said I’d rather die. And she put her hand on my shoulder and she quietly ordered me to stay alive and bring the _Hermes_ home.” _ _

__Mark hugs Beth as tightly as he dares. There’s probably some psychological explanation about love and protectiveness and such bullshit, but right now she feels so small, so fragile, like she could break into a thousand bits. “She has faith in you,” he says, and they both wince. “Aw, damn, that was worse than Hallmark, I’m sorry.”_ _

__Beth snorts delicately. “It’s okay. Even they couldn’t make a card for this. ‘Condolences on your solitary cannabalistic trip.’”_ _

__“Heh.” Mark kisses the top of her head again. “I can just imagine the artwork.”_ _

__“I do _not_ want to know.” But the smile’s back in her voice, even when she continues, “So, yeah, this is the … fourth? Fifth? Time I had this nightmare. I didn’t even have it till almost three weeks after we made it. Woke Chris up by screaming, and I couldn’t tell him, I wouldn’t.” Mark rubs his cheek against her head as he nods. How do you tell your boyfriend you had a nightmare about having to eat him? “And the other times I just got up and hit the treadmill or walked around the ship, and you know how it is on an off day. But this time, I just…” She tightens her arms around him. “I couldn’t be alone, and I couldn’t wake Chris up. I didn’t know what to do. And then I thought," she says softly, voice wobbling, "at least I could talk to Mark."_ _

__“Absofuckinlutely.” Mark cups her cheek in one hand, gently stroking the tears away with his thumb. “I’m glad you told me.”_ _

__Beth looks up at him, eyebrows hiked. “Really? That I woke you up and told you about all this gruesomeness?”_ _

__“Yeah, really,” Mark assures her, a little surprised and a lot pleased that it’s true. “I want…” He flounders around a bit, trying to find the right phrasing, then gives up and asks, “If I say, ‘I want to be here for you, Beth Johanssen, after all you’ve done for me,’ how long will you let me keep going until you punch me?”_ _

__Beth giggles, which she pretty much only does in bed, and Mark’s tired old heart swells with sappiness like a balloon. “About that far,” she says. “At least you didn’t start listing things. I know you would’ve gotten to sex acts pretty soon.”_ _

__“Done for me, to me, with me, inside me…” Is as far as he gets before she gently dents his shoulder with her little fist. “Ooh, ow, ow,” he says, to get her to grin._ _

__Beth pushes her grin against Mark’s neck, a crescent of bright teeth and soft lips, for a really nice moment before she pulls back, sobering a bit. “I tried…” she says, softly, and he shuts himself up again and listens. “I tried telling my dad about this. I knew I couldn’t just, you know, repress it or something, and Chris … he was so professional about it and everything. So I talked to Dad. I tried. And he just… made these choked little noises and changed the subject. It’s weird to think…” she pauses for a bit, there, and Mark considers daring to pet her hair, if that might help, until she keeps going. “I guess that’s part of being a grown-up, finding problems too big for your parents to help with.”_ _

__“Ugh, I hope not,” Mark says in his second-best irreverent tone, “or that means _I_ can’t be a kid forever.” Beth exhales an amused bubble of sound, pressing her smiling cheek against his shoulder. “But, yeah, that’s kinda it. I remember trying to explain to my parents what I saw on my first mission and they just — I could see the question marks in their eyes. And that wasn’t even a problem. Sometimes we really do go beyond. That’s what they raised us to do, anyway.”_ _

__“Yeah, I guess,” Beth says, but her voice is warm. And then she swallows hard enough for him to hear the tiny ‘click’ in her throat, and asks him, “Do you think I could’ve done it?”_ _

__“Lewis thought you could,” is Mark’s instinctive answer, but that just makes Beth growl. He likes her growls, rather a lot, but this isn’t quite the time, so he tells his dick to pipe down and prods his brain until, “And, I learned…” falls out. “I found out on Mars that a person can do a hell of a lot to survive. I think you could’ve done it.”_ _

__“But I couldn’t’ve come to get you. Not by myself.” Beth twists her fingers into his sweatshirt, low on his belly, approximately over his scar. “I lay awake thinking about it sometimes, what it would’ve been like, all those long months alone, trying not to go crazy… but I couldn’t’ve gotten you off Mars, and assuming everything else went the way it did…” Her fingers tighten as her voice sinks. “You would’ve…”_ _

__“Yeah,” Mark agrees, because they both know the only answer to that equation, because sometimes the chasm of possibility howls emptily beneath him even though he’s safe now. Safe-ish. “But I would’ve had your voice in my ear at least. I wouldn’t’ve been alone. And I would’ve hung on as long as I could, to talk you home.”_ _

__Beth makes a little broken noise at that, and fear pokes Mark in the chest — did he go too far? Did he make her cry again? But she just turns her face inwards along his chest, tightening her thin strong arms. “Thank you,” she tells him, voice soft as a breath. “Mark, thank you.”_ _

__“Anytime,” he tells her, relieved that what he said seems to help, and for a few heartbeats they just sit there, holding onto each other against the vastness of possibilities, until he comes up with more cheerful babble. “Besides, you still would’ve had everyone on the ground. You would’ve had Mindy! She’s great, we chatted for hours sometimes.” Beth huffs her opinion of Mark’s pathetic attempt. “Okay, yeah. But, I mean, it didn’t happen? Not that it’s not terrifying that it could have, but it didn’t.”_ _

__“Good point,” Beth murmurs. “It didn’t happen. You’re here, we’re all here, we’re not alone, I don’t have to eat anyone. I should be over it already—“_ _

__“Bullshit,” Mark says before he thinks, and she turns those big dark eyes up to him. “No, no you shouldn’t, if you’re not, of course you’re not. You’re human, Spacegirl,” gets a little quirked rise at one edge of her full mouth. “But I just…had to point out to the scary what-ifs that what actually happened went better, right? I mean, aside of your being stuck with me and everything.”_ _

__Beth laughs, bright and shining, and yawns wide, and Mark feels fizzy with triumph, like he successfully fixed a thing. She yawns, and he does, and they both kind of chuckle through it. “I should,” she starts, but Mark doesn’t let go._ _

__“Let’s get some sleep,” he offers, riding his gut feeling. “Nothing frisky, just, we’re already here, come lie down?”_ _

__Beth blinks, thinking it over, and nods, and lies down with him, still snugly wrapped around each other. _Good job, Watney,_ Mark thinks as he closes his eyes, pressing his cheek to Beth’s silky hair._ _

__But a job’s not done till it’s done. “Mark?” Beth says one more time, in that tiny, important voice. “I’m sorry, but, can I tell you one more thing? So I can stop thinking about it?”_ _

__“Of course,” Mark says magnanimously, or maybe mumbles, because his bunk is soft and Beth is soft and sleeeeeeeeep, but he pushes his eyes open and makes himself listen._ _

__“I love Chris,” she tells him. “I know if anyone gets that you get it.” Mark nods, because he kind of loves how they love each other, a lot, and especially that they share it with him. “It feels wrong to have a thing I’m not telling him about. But I don’t … how do I tell him this? Should I?”_ _

__Mark groans a little. “Oh God don’t ask me that,” he pleads. “I’m not the plans guy, I’m a carry-outer.” Beth pats his chest for that. “I mean, I see your points, both of them. I don’t honestly know. But I know he loves you a lot. I knew before you did,” he puts in, because he’s been good and he deserves one snarky remark._ _

__Beth snickers and swats his shoulder. “Yeah, yeah,” she says, and then, slower, softer, “Thank you. This helped. This really helped.”_ _

__“You betcha,” Mark mutters, and feels Beth’s soft lips brush between his eyes as he slides into sleep._ _

____

* *. *. * * * *** * * * * *. *

Mark wakes up to a soft kiss on his cheek, but Beth’s head is tucked under his chin, so — “Hey,” Chris whispers, and Mark cracks an eye open and tilts up the near corner of his mouth, looking up at Chris’s smiling face.

“Chris,” Beth moans, stretching all over like she’s blooming into waking up, and Chris turns that smile on her as her eyes flutter open. They’re so goddamn pretty.

“Hi,” Chris tells her, still smiling, but now Mark can see the little lines sunk in between his eyebrows. “I missed you,” he says, and flicks his pink tongue adorably over his pink lip. 

“I know.” Beth reaches for his hand. “I know,” she repeats, still softly, but the words sound bigger. “I think … I need to tell you something.”

That’s a cue, “Mmph,” is Mark’s first try, but he unsticks his mouth and manages, “Hey, kids, need me to clear out?”

That gets him “No!” In two-part unison, Beth’s hand on his shoulder and Chris’s arm across his waist as he insists, “We’re not kicking you out of your own bed.”

“Then sit down already,” Mark tells him, as he reaches up to mesh fingers with Beth. “Keep going, Bethy Jo, don’t let me distract you,” makes her snort and Chris chuckle, and Mark awards himself another Supportive Side Thing point. 

And a few more, when Beth leans into him as she turns to Chris, pressing her back to his front and holding his hand like a lifeline as she says, “I’ve been having these nightmares,” and as Chris nods, listening intently, he sets his warm hand on theirs.


End file.
